In recent years, conventional flashlights with an incandescent bulb have increasingly been replaced by flashlights having light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The advantage of an LED consists in particular in the lower consumption of electricity in comparison with the incandescent bulb, the impact and shock resistance and a much longer life. This is due at least to the fact that, in contrast to an incandescent bulb, the greater part of the energy supplied is converted directly into light and not into heat.
Meanwhile, different light-emitting diodes are also known that have different brightnesses and/or can output light in different colors. In addition, LED chips on a contact plate, so-called chips on boards, are also known, even in variants where different LEDs are provided on a mount.
In order to switch the light-emitting diode or light-emitting diodes to a greater brightness or to a different color mix, it is necessary to activate different circuits with different voltages, for which purpose mechanical step switches are known that close different or else additional contacts, depending on the switching step. The disadvantage of such step switches consists in their relatively high level of susceptibility to wear and the sometimes notched guides, so that it is not possible to rule out the possibility of jamming. Depending on the quality of the compression spring used and of the detachable latching elements, undesired faulty switching operations likewise cannot be ruled out.
In addition to such step switches, rotary switches are also known. For example, WO 2000/045086 describes a tubular flashlight with a light source at each end of the flashlight. The flashlight comprises two parts that are rotatable with respect to one another. One part of the flashlight is connected to a battery cartridge, with a segmented contact plate being fastened to the end of the battery cartridge, the segmented contact plate bearing against fixedly mounted electrical contacts of the other part. By rotation of the battery cartridge, the electrical contacts can be connected to different contact faces and can therefore close different circuits.
One disadvantage with the described construction consists in that the flashlight parts are only plugged together and can therefore be withdrawn easily from one another, whereupon they will cease to function.